Charging $22.99 for boxes that include either two or four books.

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On the heels of announcing the new Echo Dot Kids Edition, Amazon has a new offering tailored to parents who want more convenient, kid-friendly content for their family. The company now offers Prime Book Box, a curated box of two or four children's books available for Prime members for $22.99.

If you've dabbled in subscription boxes before, you'll know how the Prime Book Box works. Prime members who sign up for the new offering will get a box of books shipped to their home every one, two, or three months. Parents indicate the age range of their children to get books that best suit their reading levels—infants and kids up to two years old get four board books, while all other kids from ages three to 12 get two hardcover titles.

Further Reading

The Prime Book Box doesn't follow rules as strict as some other book subscription boxes. In addition to choosing the frequency of the box, parents can also skip a box whenever they want and choose from a selection of four alternative books if they don't want one of the books that Amazon selects for their box by default. Amazon curates everything, including the alternative book options, so parents can't get any book they want, but that's still a good option to have in case they already own a selected title.

The $22.99 price is also somewhat flexible. According to Amazon's FAQ page, if the books in your box cost less than $22.99 if you were to buy them yourself, Amazon will charge you the lower price. The $22.99 price tag is already more affordable than some other children's book subscription boxes, including OwlCrate Jr. and Reading Bug Box, so it will likely tempt some parents who want a constant stream of new books in the house for their kids to read.

Prime Book Box is the latest push from Amazon into children's content. The company announced the upcoming Echo Dot Kids Edition last week, which features a kid-proof case and a one-year subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. The company's FreeTime service gives parents and kids age-appropriate content that kids can access through Alexa on the Echo Dot Kids Edition, including educational games and read-aloud stories made by Disney, National Geographic, and other partners.

Not only is Prime Book box a way for Amazon to get back to its book-selling roots, but it's also a way for the company to reach parents who don't want their kids calling on Alexa for everything. There has been growing concern about technology's effect on children and the propensity for kids to get hooked on new tech. Prime Book Box gives Amazon a way to reach parents who prefer their children read physical books rather than asking Alexa to read a story for them.

The new subscription box offering also comes shortly after Amazon announced a price increase for Prime memberships—up from $99 to $119 annually. The company cited new Prime features and increased costs as the reasons it will raise the annual Prime fee starting May 11, 2018 for new members and June 16, 2018 for existing members.

Prime Book Box is currently only available to Prime members, and those interested must "request an invitation" on the Prime Book Box webpage. There's no word whether the subscription box will ever be made available for non-Prime members.

I don't need something like this myself, but I could see using this for nieces/nephews, or even local charities & school libraries. In my local suburbs, school libraries are easier to access for children than the public libraries, but they have less funding for new works.

Ninjaed by multiple people. My wife and Son are at the local library 1-2 times a week on average. Most of the librarians know them and they know the 100 book limit at the library and with startling regularity have to return books to check out more. I see no reason to pay for a random selection of books monthly. It doesn't hurt that our normal library also has a park and aquatic center too.

Edit - That's not to say we don't have a sizable collection of kids books of our own too but for random books to may or may not like Free is a much better price than whatever amazon ends up charging.

My public library is free, has an enormous selection of books, and lets me borrow as many as I want as frequently as I want. A curated selection from yours truly.

The best part of my public library is that it gets my kid out of the house. I love taking her there and letting her figure out what she wants to read.

++ My three year old has at least 20 books from the library in her room right now. Probably more, I lose count. And we'll go back this weekend and get another pile, I'm sure. She loves passing the books across the self-checkout scanner, or shoving them in the return slot. It's a whole adventure for her to go there.

I appreciate online services and subscriptions that remove tasks or trips to the store that are irritating or difficult, but this is not one of them. Going to the library for more books is a joy.

It would be nice if Prime "benefits" were more beneficial. Subscriptions that are barely beating Amazon retail price is not a great benefit. They could just post a page with suggested books for each age range and buy them with one-click. Or you could lag the monthly book club by about 6 months and pick up used copies for cheap.

But ultimately I personally don't care, I don't have kids and I got my Prime membership down to $68.29 annually. Actually I have a $70 Amazon gift card from Prime Benefits so it's basically free.

At 4 books a month, maybe this is fine, especially if they spread things out (like only 1st books in series, etc).

But I can't help feeling uneasy about the reciprocal gating aspects of this in terms of author selection and the publishing industry's frequently nastier/cut throat aspects of who does and doesn't end up reaching audiences.

I'd be a lot more comfortable if this had some details behind what kind of effort is going to be involved in reaching out wider beyond just the darlings of the industry and actually making room for authors who aren't already easily A listed, but at the same time, it's arguably no worse than any of the other book clubs/etc that are out there in terms of that.

And, granted, Amazon does a lot that does make space for authors struggling to find inroads with traditional publishers. For better or worse. Of course, that opens up the question of what kind of favoritism could possibly play out in regards to Amazon's own publishing aspects.

Ultimately, 4 books and 4 alternates is (sadly) better than many, but it also feels like something where it's kind of just "yet another" rather than anything that stands above the rest of the box/club offerings.

Not damning it at all, and I can't fault Amazon for getting in the game, especially given how much it fits in with the original premise of Amazon, but it would be nice to see something that tries for more.

The library definitely seems like the better (best?) choice, for those who can afford it (a lot of times people see "free" and ignore other costs involved in fitting something in that might not affect them, but can affect others)/make it work. Personally I think that for those who can find a way/time to make it work, it's worth doing so, even if it costs in other ways, because libraries are simply magical to begin with and so is the discovery aspect of picking out books for one's self, which is important especially for younger children. There's a lot more to learn from going to a library than just what's in any individual book.

At the same time, as a voracious reader and someone who has her compulsive moments (*cough*) about collecting things like books, there's certainly an aspect to buying and owning books that is compelling. Authors and artists do get compensated for library books, but it doesn't hurt to also support them more directly, especially on ones worth re-reading. But book clubs/book subscriptions aren't exactly a personal choice in making an effort to be supportive. Granted, borrowing and then just writing a set of small checks to your favorite authors/book artists/editors would leave more money in their pockets than buying the books you like the most does, as a proportion of your money spent, after all of the cuts involved in what finally ends up in their hands through the traditional channels.

We have so many kids books and have checked so many out from the library that I hardly believe Amazon would be able to "curate highly rated books our customers love" without constantly sending us stuff we already have or that they've already read. It sounds like disappointment wrapped around a huge pain in the butt.

Pointless ... just visit your local public library. It's free, eco-friendly, you have a MUCH broader range of book you can expose you kids to and it's more social (if you want it to be). Heck, my local public library even has eBooks, streaming magazines, mobile/tablet apps, movies and a whole lot of other things.

I'm already paying for all this with my tax money, so see no reason to fund Amazon this way.

My public library is free, has an enormous selection of books, and lets me borrow as many as I want as frequently as I want. A curated selection from yours truly.

I would also highly suggest your local Thrift store. They have tons of books for pennies. We've filled a floor to ceiling book case full of children's books for my 5 year old son. Most of the books are in great condition.

I don't see an issue for signing up to get a box 2-4 times a year. For a reasonable "not to exceed" price, you are getting books that are likely to appeal (thanks to curation) to nieces, nephews, possibly friend's of your kids or kids' of your friends. I'm pretty sure that today's youth aren't going to be as excited to read Indian in the Cupboard or Where the Red Fern Grows as I was.

For my own, maybe I let them keep one or two of the books and the rest we'd get from the library.

Cool, instead of buying books from Amazon myself, I can now pay Amazon to but books for me!

Right? Maybe I'm old fashioned but I think I'd prefer spending a few extra bucks to actually pick out what I want my kid to read myself.

As a side note, is Amazon going to be using a special book selecting algorithm? Or are they gonna be sending out overstock? Are publishers gonna be paying Amazon extra so their books go in the box? All of the above?

While there used to b other sources for books, a lot of commenters don't seem to realize there is no reason Amazon couldn't use your Purchase History to ensure you only get books you haven't bought from Amazon before.

Let's not forget the other reason this is not a good idea. After a while your house is filled up with books that your kid has outgrown creating stress and mess.

I have 3 kids and I have found that you need to keep a base of 20 or so kids books. The rest can be taken care of at the library.

And another thing... once your kid is in school, he/she has one day in the week for library. So every week they are getting a new book which is then returned and replaced the following week. Even if you don't make use of your public library, if your kid is in elementary school, he/she is hitting the biblioteca once a week.

If Prime is $120/yr, and a box is $23/month additional... I see the GiftLit is $50 less (but then that is w/o Prime...music, videos, 2-day ship, Prime Pantry...).

I like Gift Lit..however the one thing I wish they would update is...I send nieces' books monthly.I get email of what title. But damn PITA to track it for next year (that I don't duplicate choice).

Reading is Fundamental!

Just a nitpick; your Amazon prices are a little low. The new amount is $120 p/yr plus your local sales tax; sales tax being a misnomer since it's been changed over the years to include services. Ymmv as this is for most American states except for five of the ones that still may have a local tax ordinance.

There's no reason to believe it won't apply to the $23.00 monthly.

So… for example: annually in rounding amounts for California, it would be $288 for the Book of the Month Club, $120 for the Prime subscriptions and $37 for the sales–service tax for both items (at 9% in Palo Alto); making the total $445 p/yr averaging $37 p/mo. (Or $131 p/yr just for Prime at $11 p/mo.)

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Although it's a bit obvious, it's probably a good practice to have originally included an obligatory conclusion to this (or any) post: The Gift Lit sub would be $225 less with Netflix SD one screen stream ($8 p/mo) lowering the difference to $125. Then it comes to deciding if the Prime extras are worth it.